Evolution is condemned to rely upon variations of the same theme: the one ancestral sequence for genes and spacers.

Abstract

Nature is condemned to play variations of the same theme in evolution, past commitments progressively restricting freedom of choices in evolutionary directions. While each family of genes evolved by the mechanism of gene duplication, this mechanism is extremely inefficient, the usual fate of redundant copies of the ancestral gene being degeneracy. As a result, the euchromatic DNA of higher organisms became a desert in which still-functioning genes are found scattered like oases at an average distance of 35,000 base-pairs of barren stretch between neighbors in the case of mammals. The 20-base-long sequence (AGCTG) (AGCTG) (AGCTG) (GGGTG) can be considered as one of the few ultimate ancestors of all euchromatic DNAs. Long stretches of intergenic spacers are mostly represented by degenerate subfamilies of repeats derived from the above. Certain 30- 50-base-long units of such degenerate subfamilies apparently served as the primordial building block of the ultimate ancestor of each family of genes. For example, the primordial building block of the ancestor for antigen-binding sites (variable regions) of mammalian immunoglobulin heavy chains apparently was TTC-AGC-AGC-CTG-ACT-GGA-TAT GAC-CTG-GAG-TGG-ACT-TAC-TGC-GCA-AGA, which is the original reading frame specified in the 16-amino-acid-residues-long sequence Phe-Ser-Ser-Leu-Thr-Gly-Tyr-Asp-Leu-Glu-Trp-Thr-Tyr-Cys-Ala-Arg.